Court Case Shows the Evil of Illinois State Government

Steve Stanek is a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and a former managing editor of two Heartland publications, "Budget & Tax News" and "Finance, Insurance & Real Estate News." Stanek's articles have appeared in numerous local, state and national publications since he began writing for Heartland in 2003, and he has been a frequent guest on local and national radio and television programs discussing government budget and regulatory issues.

As a lifelong Illinois resident, I long ago came to believe that my state government is more than corrupt, incompetent, inept, wasteful, abusive, etc. It is evil.

Last Thursday I read a news story that convinced me of its evil. I was so bothered by it that I could not bring myself to comment on it until now.

The hard-copy version of the Chicago Sun-Times had an article headlined, “7 years for driver who had traces of pot in her system.” I am looking at it this very second. It’s about a woman, Alia N. Bernard, who reached for her sunglasses while driving. She took her eyes off the road and caused a crash that killed two motorcyclists.

Cops and prosecutors admit she was not under the influence of any substance. But a blood test detected a tiny amount of marijuana from several days earlier. Last April the Illinois supreme court had ruled “prosecutors did not have to prove impairment was a ‘proximate cause’ of a fatal crash but just that defendants have any amount of a drug in their systems,” the Sun-Times reported.

Note: ANY AMOUNT of a substance is enough for the state to level felony driving-under-the-influence charges.

This the prosecutors did, and the woman was convicted of aggravated driving under the influence and sentenced to seven years in prison despite having no criminal record, medical evidence showing she was not under the influence, and cops and prosecutors who admit she was not under the influence.

When Illinois prosecutors can charge people with crimes they admit did not occur, and when Illinois courts can accept those charges and convict and punish people for those non-existent crimes, we have an evil government. And a dangerous one.

Here’s a link to an article on the case. I can’t find the hard-copy version of the story I read, but this Sun-Times version has the same basic information.

Court Case Shows the Evil of Illinois State Government was last modified: February 14th, 2012 by Steve Stanek